


The Scientific Properties of Pie-Making and Dead-Waking

by agentverbivore (verbivore8642)



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Pushing Daisies
Genre: Adorable FitzSimmons, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Bakery, Alternate Universe - Pushing Daisies, Domestic Fluff, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Crack, Grumpy Fitz, Light Angst, Mild Gore, Pushing Daisies AU, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Undercover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-16
Updated: 2014-06-20
Packaged: 2018-02-04 21:10:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1793311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verbivore8642/pseuds/agentverbivore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While on a mission to collect an 084, Fitz accidentally gains the power to raise people from the dead. He and Jemma go into hiding while they try to figure out how to cure him. (Pushing Daisies AU)</p><p> </p><p>"Fitz held the door open for her as Jemma followed him out, and he tried not to shrink away from her too noticeably. He’d wake the dead and bake pies, but he certainly wasn’t going to be happy about it. "</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in some nebulous time before the finale, but after Trip joins the team. The (light) angst is brief, and the fluff is mighty.
> 
> A few things to note about the Pushing Daisies Universe:
> 
> Fitz can wake the dead with one touch, but if he doesn’t touch them again within 60 seconds someone else will die. The new death is decided randomly, and by proximity. First touch = life, second touch = permanent death.
> 
> The people who are raised from the dead and told as such never seem to have a problem with being dead.

It was the eighteenth day of their temporary reassignment, and Fitz was rapidly beginning to hate the smell of strawberry-rhubarb filling. Jemma clearly had no such problems since she was preparing to make another batch. Grinning all the while, she held a bowl full of rotting strawberries out to him.

“I really don’t think this is a good idea,” he offered wearily, knowing what her response was going to be.

“We’ve done the tests, Fitz. The fruit is safe to eat once you revive it – not a single cellular abnormality in any of them. Come on, it saves us _so much time_ on grocery shopping!” She bounced on the balls of her feet, and her dress flapped up a little in the breeze. Jemma had taken to the assignment like she usually did to complicated dissections. Her undercover character was very girly and dressed like a co-ed from the 1950’s, and it was driving Fitz more than a little insane.

She pointedly pushed the bowl towards him; he sighed and began gingerly tapping all of the strawberries, wincing at the small bursts of energy released from his fingertip.

If he had never entered that warehouse, he would never have gained the power to return the dead to the living (for sixty seconds at a time), and he would never have needed to go undercover as a shop owner for his own safety. Jemma and Fitz were working on fixing his new power (or “illness,” as he insisted) from the lab hidden in their shared apartment above the pie shop, but it was taking longer than they’d hoped. With these limited resources they weren’t sure how long they’d have to stay here. Fitz missed the Bus, and the team, but he missed being normal most of all. Well, as normal as a multi-doctorate-holding engineering genius could be, anyway.

The front bell tinkled, and Fitz looked eagerly up to see May striding through the door. Wednesdays were their debrief days and usually the best part of the week. Any time he could afford to focus on something close to real science or a mission was a luxury these days.

In keeping with their secret identities, May was wearing a trench coat and fedora straight out of a noir film. Fitz wasn’t exactly sure how this helped her keep a low profile, but he’d leave the costume decisions to the professionals. (After all, Jemma had mentioned that Skye had helped her brainstorm the fashion of her own undercover character, and despite his general bitterness about the whole affair, Fitz had to admit that there was something to be said for fitted vintage dresses.)

May matter-of-factly checked all of the olive-green booths for nonexistent customers, turned the OPEN sign to CLOSED, and then sat at the pie bar. (Jemma spent a lot of time fretting about their lackluster advertising budget, but Fitz was rather less invested in the financial success of this ill-conceived endeavor.)  All of this was done in May’s typical silence while Jemma fetched something from the kitchen and Fitz stood awkwardly to the side, hands firmly buried in his pockets.

Jemma plopped a plate of freshly baked pie in front of May and then untied her apron. “Any good news?”

May dug into the pie and shook her head. “Skye’s still trying to track down the Hydra front that rented the warehouse, and Coulson isn’t having any luck figuring out who knows about Fitz – or how they found out.” She glanced over to where he was standing a few feet behind Jemma, his arms pulled tightly into his body. “And we had to go after an oh-eight-four last week.”

Fitz groaned in frustration. “Come on, May! I’m going _crazy_ here. There are only so many products I can engineer without my actual lab. Or a real mission budget. While also spending most of the day baking pies for hungry customers.”

“Is he showing any negative side effects?” May addressed the question to Jemma, who shook her head.

“He passes his tests with flying colors. He’s healthy as a horse.”

“A horse that can bring back the dead,” he muttered.

“I’m sorry Fitz, but we’ve got lives to save, in addition to figuring out what happened to you. Be grateful Jemma refused to leave your side –” Fitz wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw May glance approvingly at her. “Otherwise you’d be undercover here alone.”

Fitz glared down at the overly-cheerfully-colored floor tiles and set his jaw. “Is that all, then?”

May handed her plate back to Jemma, who bustled over to the kitchen. “Actually, I’ve got a short mission for you.” Both Jemma and Fitz turned back to her in unison, puzzled. “One of our leads was killed two days ago, and we need to get some information from him –”

“Oh, no, absolutely _not_ –”

May talked over Fitz’s objections. “So we need you to bring him back for us.”

He stared at her, mouth gaping, and glanced at Jemma for back up. “What happened to being _undercover_ Agent May?! Isn’t that the _point_ of this ridiculous charade?”

She stood and gave him a humorless smile. “We just need those sixty seconds.”

Fitz rubbed his eyes in exasperation. “Right, so you want me to bring someone back and then kill them again. _That_ sounds perfectly morally acceptable.”

“We talked about that, Fitz,” Jemma interrupted gently. “You can’t kill someone who was already dead.” She reached for his arm in a familiar gesture of comfort, but Fitz jerked away, stumbling back over an errant chair. Jemma flinched, but retracted her hand. 

 _This_ was the worst part of the whole thing, Fitz reflected bitterly. He couldn’t touch Jemma – she insisted whatever had happened to him wasn’t contagious, but he refused to take the chance. Until they figured out what was wrong with him, Fitz couldn’t touch his best friend ( _or maybe something more_ , a part of his brain whispered), and it was slowly killing him. They’d always been inseparable, but now there was this invisible barrier between them and he was terrified it would change things forever.

May and Jemma were both watching him carefully. He sighed and untied his apron. “Fine. Let’s go raise the dead.”

Jemma nodded reassuringly at him as he followed May to the door. “Stand down, Sleepy,” she called, and the small drone hovering in the kitchen floated onto the mat that acted as the DWARF’s de-facto bed.

Fitz held the door open for her as Jemma followed him out, and he tried not to shrink away from her too noticeably. He’d wake the dead and bake pies, but he certainly wasn’t going to be happy about it.

 

\------

 

At that moment in the city morgue, the chill was seeping through Fitz’s cardigan, the smell of formaldehyde was tickling uncomfortably at his nose, and Jemma was refusing to stand a safe distance away from him. Today was not one of the good Wednesdays.

He had his arms crossed so tightly across his chest that it was restricting his own breathing, but this didn’t stop him from flinching when she stepped around him to inspect one of the newer corpses. As Fitz wondered idly about the benefits of dressing in a full hazmat suit every day, May pulled the door to the morgue shut and twisted the shutters closed.

“Okay, the coroner’s agreed to give us five minutes in here. Luckily for him we won’t even need that much.” May strode over to the corpse on the middle tray, flicked the blue sheet back, and turned expectantly to Fitz.

“Are you sure we really want to do this, May? Do you remember what happened the last time...” He trailed off, trying to suppress his own memories of violent screams and blood oozing across a singed concrete floor as he watched an unfamiliar SHIELD agent drop dead. Fitz had learned about the sixty-second limit the hard way.

May clicked the safety off on her icer and aimed the weapon at the corpse’s head. “I’ve got your back.”

“It’s gonna be okay, Fitz,” Jemma murmured, raising a hand towards him before she remembered and pushed her hair behind her ear instead. She tried smiling encouragingly; all this did was distract Fitz from the task at hand.

He shook his head and trudged over to the slick steel table, rolling up his sleeves as he went. The man under the sheet had three ginormous, sewn-up slashes across his chest, and Fitz swallowed the bile that crept up the back of his throat. Taking a deep breath, he started the timer on his watch and pressed one finger to the man’s chest, shivering at the unnerving snap of yellow energy that sent life and consciousness pulsing through the once-dead body.

The corpse blinked his blood-shot eyes and leaned up on his elbows, bursting one of the stitches and spraying a mixture of chemicals and blood at Fitz’s feet. “Whoa, that was one intense nap.”

Jemma rushed forward then and drew the man’s attention away from Fitz, who could feel a certain kind of greenness creeping up his neck.

“Hello there, I’m very sorry to say that you died two days ago, and we’d like to know if you happen to know why.” She smiled in a bedside-manner kind of way, and Fitz reminded himself to thank her later when he didn’t feel ill. He’d never have been able to do any of this without her.

“Aw shit,” the man exclaimed, and swung his legs over the edge of the table, sending one of his feet clear across the room. “Oops. – Does this mean I don’t get to go to Asgard?”

May frowned, having adjusted herself so that the icer was still pointing squarely at his head. “Asgard?”

“Yeah! Man, I heard that the chicks up there are _smokin’_ hot aliens, you know what I’m saying?” He winked at Fitz, who just glanced nervously down at his timer.

“Thirty-four seconds left.”

“Who said you could go to Asgard? And for doing what?”

“There was this attack on a rogue SHIELD team a few months back – you heard of it?” May nodded. Jemma glanced nervously at Fitz; there was only one attack he could be talking about. “Yeah, so there was this Asgardian altar stone that Hydra had smuggled out of SHIELD, and that’s what drew them there –”

The team members glanced at each other. “What did the stone do?” May asked.

“Heal the dead, I think? Yeah, pretty sure. Kinda hard to remember when my intestines are threatening to squeeze right out over here, ya know what I mean?”

“Thirteen seconds, May.”

“What happened to the stone? Who brought it there?”

“Got blown up in the attack. Real shame. Think about how many people that could save. Oliver Charles was the one who ordered the stone, but I don’t think he–” Fitz slapped his hand to the man’s face and winced as yellow sparks instantly drained the life out of the person sitting in front of him. The corpse thudded backwards onto the table, and there was silence.

Fitz wiped the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve while May and Jemma shifted the body back and covered it again with the sheet. “Well that’s good, isn’t it?” Jemma said, unconsciously picking at the creases of her dress.

“Not exactly,” replied May, putting the final touches on returning everything to its original place before going straight to the door.

“Why not?” Fitz slid past Jemma to get to May and shoved his hands back into his pockets.

May wrapped the trench tighter around herself and turned back before opening the door. “Because Oliver Charles died in a car accident two weeks ago.”

 

\------

 

Fitz slammed open the front door to the pie shop so hard that it set off Sleepy’s alarm. The DWARF was set to guard the door to their apartment and lab when they were gone, which Fitz had forgotten in his anger. As he managed to get the damn thing shut off, Jemma and May followed him through the door. He took one look at May and turned on his heels.

“I cannot _believe_ you just made me do that!”

“It’s for your sake, Fitz!” May called after him, but he had already rounded the corner into the kitchen.

He didn’t leave, not really – he just needed a minute to catch his breath and scrub the memory of the second corpse’s leathery, decomposing flesh from his mind. Jemma, of course, had just talked to the rotting body like she might to any other acquaintance; he could practically hear the gears turning in her head the whole time they were at Oliver Charles’ grave. Being able to study someone he’d returned to life was Jemma’s greatest desire these days, but since the only person he’d accidentally kept alive had been killed again shortly thereafter, she was unlikely to have the chance.  

“That wasn’t fair, May.”

Fitz could hear them in the dining area and wondered how long he could go without talking to anyone ever again. Especially not dead people.

“I wanted to see if his mood had an effect on it.”

Jemma pulled a stool out at the pie bar; he heard the steel feet scratch across the tile. “He can pretty much revive the fruit whenever he wants, as far as I can tell. It’s why I started using the rotten fruit, to test that. His mood doesn’t matter – although he’s pretty much been grumpy ever since we got here.”

May sighed. “I don’t blame him. Of all the superpowers…”

“It’s not a superpower,” Fitz interjected, startling Jemma, and emerged from behind the kitchen wall. “It’s an illness and we’re going to fix it. We have to.” Neither of the other two responded. He kicked weakly at a nearby chair. “We _have_ to.”

After a moment, May strode over to him, making deliberate eye contact. “You may not have liked it, but today was the first big break we’ve had in the case in weeks. Oliver Charles had the information Skye needs to locate the Hydra front, now we know what caused it, and Coulson can see if he can swing any help from Asgard in getting this settled.”

He leaned back against the pie bar, only a couple of feet away from Jemma, and pushed his hands as far into his pockets as they’d go. “Right.”

“We’re all working on it Fitz. We want you back on the Bus, too. Okay?” He nodded and exhaled in frustration. “I have to get back,” she said, heading for the door. “Bye, Simmons –” May turned to Fitz and gave him one of her rare smiles. “Pie-maker.” Then she disappeared through the front door with a tip of her hat, the OPEN sign swishing forward as the door closed behind her.

“I like that,” Jemma said, grinning, “Fitz the pie-maker." 

“More like Fitz the dead-waker,” he deadpanned, and flicked on Sleepy’s chameleon setting from his watch. As he escaped into the kitchen, he heard Jemma sigh before the welcome bell tinkled, signaling new customers and a return to their undercover personas.

Before he rounded the corner into the kitchen, he watched her for a moment, taking in the ease with which undercover-Jemma made people feel welcome and comfortable. That had never been him; he always seemed to put people off, either by making them feel stupid or by simply talking too much.

The woman in front of him right now, taking orders in the salmon-polka-dot dress and matching kitten heels, was almost nothing like his best friend, the girl who stole his cardigans and got cold in the dead of summer. But later that night, he knew she’d throw a lab coat on over the dress and put on horrendously ugly plaid slippers, and she’d reappear – his Jemma. The one he knew better than any other person in the world. And she would reach over him with bare arms, to grab her notes or a sample, completely ignoring the fact that there were new boundaries to their friendship now. Fitz wasn’t sure if he was more worried for her safety or angry that things had changed.

 

\------

 

A few hours later, there was a lull in the shop after a large crowd of teenagers left, and Fitz noticed that Jemma was missing. He called for her up the stairs to their lab-apartment, and peeked out the back of the shop. She wasn’t in the alley behind the store, but he heard faint music that seemed to be coming from the front of the shop.

When Fitz stepped around to the storefront, he saw a slim figure wearing a full-length plastic protective suit – that puffed out around a layered skirt – and holding a small nozzle of insecticide. The figure was dancing in tune to 90’s pop music and clearly had no idea Fitz had found her. He grinned as she hopped back and forth while eradicating some dire insect threat in the cracks of their storefront. A peppy female singer crooned on camouflaged Sleepy’s radio, giving the impression that the music was coming out of thin air.

After a moment, Fitz cleared his throat; Jemma turned her mask-covered head and flicked off the insecticide.

“Fitz!” spoke the muffled voice, and Fitz gestured at her mask. “Oh,” she laughed, and lifted off the plastic headpiece, static making her hair stick up in ways that would normally require large amounts of humidity. Jemma was smiling, cheeks flushed, and she reached out to Fitz with a gloved hand. “Dance with me, Fitz!”

He glanced skeptically at the full-length protective wear and chuckled. “What?”

“Come on, I don’t think I’ve seen you smile in weeks. You _know_ it’s important to relax in the field.”

Before he could protest again, Jemma grabbed his hands and started doing this silly, twisting dance to the rhythm of the music. Reluctantly, Fitz let her pull him along, reminding himself that she was completely covered and he probably couldn’t transfer anything to her skin through the thick, white plastic.

He thought he recognized the song; a sappy pop one his mother used to love singing loudly and out of tune in their living room when he was a kid. A song he’d once listened to at a school dance while watching the first girl who gave him butterflies in his stomach. Fitz didn’t generally like this kind of music – more saccharine than the confectioner’s sugar they used to top their key lime pie – but Jemma was dancing with such inelegant abandon that it began to grow on him.

She started doing this little hoppy two-step, going from one of his sides to the other, the plastic tickling his bare arms, and Fitz had to laugh. At the way her hair was growing fuzzier by the second, the way the strange white suit bobbed separately from her body, almost of its own accord, and at the way she was looking up at him with this pure, unabashed trust and happiness he couldn’t quite understand.

Jemma chuckled in return and twirled around him in a circle. “See, a laugh! That wasn’t so hard, was it?” The song changed and she started doing a funny old dance Fitz had only seen in movies from the 60’s, holding her nose and waving her hand up in the air like she was swimming. At that, he doubled over, full out laughing, and Jemma broke down, too, both leaning against each other under the protection of the over-large suit.

Once they caught their breaths, and wiped a way a couple errant giggle-tears, Fitz smiled down at Jemma. “Thanks – I needed that.”

“I know.” She grinned back at him and traipsed through the front door, insect spray in tow and nearly-invisible-Sleepy floating after her. Fitz took a deep breath and glanced up at the cloudless, darkening sky, feeling suddenly that life as a pie maker with Jemma at his side might not be so terrible after all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Fitz panics, Jemma has an excellent idea, and Coulson arrives with a solution.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again to MK for editing! And for T for giving me a few choice ideas for this particular section. (See: The liver bit.)

The customers were scarce that evening, so the two scientists abandoned shop early to get to their lab work. As Fitz had expected, Jemma carelessly reached over his bare arm to grab her gloves within just a few minutes of being upstairs. He cringed, but set his jaw, deciding that he was tired of scolding her for the day.

“So,” Fitz said, making small talk while Jemma prepped a new vial for the day’s blood. “I’ve been wondering – what do you think dies in place of the fruit? When I revive it, I mean.”

Vial and pen in hand, Jemma nodded enthusiastically. “Good question, Fitz. I was thinking about that last night, actually, and I’m wondering if we could set up a camera system in the pantry to see if maybe it spoils nearby food. Of course, if it does something else, like kill off a few of our skin cells, that will be much harder to figure out, _unless_ we develop a system to measure –” She trailed off, wincing, and kicked off the heels she’d forgotten to remove. “How some women wear these every day for years on end, I will never understand.” Fitz chuckled as she pulled out the ratty plaid slippers she’d brought with her from the bus.

Some days, Fitz would tinker with one of his old gadgets and Jemma would take a peek and make a suggestion or two, and it was just like home. But after May’s visit, he knew Jemma would want to study him, so he made himself comfortable while she prepared to poke and prod him, take blood samples and do saliva tests and all those other repetitive things they needed in order to try to find a cure.

She muttered as she worked. “Two resurrections in one day, but you don’t seem to have any ill energy effects like Mike Peterson did from using his superpowers…”

Fitz snorted. “At least his superpowers weren’t so rubbish.” Jemma gave him a look, but he just shrugged. “I mean, what happened to him was horrible, but if Cybertec hadn’t gotten their hands on him his powers would’ve been dead useful. Not like this stupid –” He waved his hand vaguely at himself.

Jemma swabbed antiseptic on his left arm and prepared to draw blood, latex gloves thankfully in place. “I think it’s sort of nice, in a way, Fitz. If you had this power all the time, you could use it to, I don’t know, solve crimes or something. Help people get closure or catch people who’d killed someone they loved.”

He winced as the needle went in. “Like a pie-making avenger?”

Jemma slapped a band-aid over his arm, and grinned. “Something like that, yes. I could make you a little cape.”

“No capes,” Fitz grumbled, watching Jemma label and store tonight’s blood sample. She started shifting aside papers and notes, searching for something, and pulled a small paperback book out of the pile that covered Fitz’s workstation.

Fitz immediately flushed red, and reached out for it. “That’s mine, I was just reading it here last night before –”

But Jemma stepped back, a bemused smile spreading across her face, and opened the small novel to Fitz’s magnetic bookmark. “‘If I loved you–’” She coughed, having evidently breathed in some dust, and swallowed thickly before going back to reading aloud the last passage Fitz had read the night before. “‘...I would fill my soul with the sound of your voice and the contents of your thoughts until the last spark of my love for you lit the shabby darkness of my dying mind.’” There was a sharp, pregnant silence, then, and Fitz wondered if all the blood rushing to his face was making him dizzy. “What on _earth_ are you reading, Fitz?”

Something had struck him about that passage, as if somehow he knew that feeling all too well. As if somewhere, in a different life, another version of him had held tightly onto the image of Jemma’s face before knowing nothing but darkness. The thought was ridiculous, of course, and Fitz had pushed the book aside and gone to bed immediately after.

“Coulson gave it to me before we left, made me promise to read it. I think he was trying to make a point but I can’t make head or tails of it, really. Strange man, that one.” Fitz laughed nervously, and motioned to her work. “Are you going to get examining, or will we be here all night?”

Jemma raised an eyebrow and dropped the book on a side table. Fitz wasn’t sure exactly why he’d felt embarrassed about her finding the book, but he chalked it up to a side effect of some of the more confusing feelings he’d had about his best friend in the aftermath of their dangerous months on the Bus. His priority now was keeping her safe from himself; that was all that mattered.

She started doing normal physician-esque check-ups on him, and he sat there patiently, fondly noting the calm determination and focus behind her eyes as she examined and made notes.

Fitz cleared his throat. “I never said thank you.”

Jemma glanced briefly down at him. “For what?”

“For coming with me. Here, undercover. I mean, Coulson could have had Trip check in on me every couple of days, you know he’s got field-medical experience –”

She snorted and grabbed a thin beam electric torch from the table. “Don’t be ridiculous, he’d have to bring your samples back to me. What a waste of time.”

Fitz blinked in the aftermath of her examining his pupils, trying to rid himself of the light spots. “I just – I’m really glad it’s you here with me, Jemma.”

Ignoring his tone, Jemma scoffed as she made notes. “As if I’d ever leave you alone like this – especially now. Really, what’s gotten into you, Fitz?”

She set up a blood pressure monitor around his arm and turned to the meter read-out. He tried not to twitch away when he noticed that her bare wrist was only inches away from his skin, and wondered if they were ever really going to be able to fix him.

Would he spend the rest of his life too terrified to touch anyone else? Would he have to lock himself away, afraid that the people he loved would drop suddenly to the floor? If he was being honest with himself, he mused bitterly, deep in his heart of hearts Fitz felt like he might deserve that, after the day at the warehouse. Being alone forever, being unable to connect with anyone, just to make sure that no one else died because of him. It was as if his greatest fears as a fifteen year old prodigy had been made tangible; as if the universe had given him these few wonderful years with Jemma and SHIELD, only to snatch it all away again.

If this had happened back at the Academy, when he spent all of his time locked away in his room, before Jemma had sped so blindingly into his life, he would never have known what he was missing. Everything was changing again, and there was a vicious knot in his stomach that he just couldn’t figure out how to untie.

“You were so close to me, that day in the warehouse.” Jemma looked up from where she was standing at the table, surprised by the quietness of his tone. “When it happened for the first time – when that other agent died because I brought someone back to life. Before I knew the time limit. It could have been you, Jemma.” He raised his eyes to hers and stared piercingly back at her. “I would never have been able to forgive myself, if you–”

“Hey, stop that,” she replied, her tone soft. “We’re going to fix this, together. Like we always do. Right?”

“Right.” Fitz tried to smile but couldn’t quite shake the moroseness that had crept up on him. Maybe he shouldn’t raise two people from the dead in one day; it seemed that it was making him more than a little morbid.

 

\------

 

The sun finished setting just as the last of their customers closed the door behind them. This was actually Fitz’s favorite time of day in the shop, with the light filtering through the round windows over the brightly painted walls. Jemma cleared the front room while he took care of the kitchen and the counters; they worked in sync, almost like they were back in their real lab. Sleepy hummed out of hiding and everything was at peace.

Jemma had said goodbye to the night’s final customers using her undercover accent – which was, in her words, “just a hint of Somerset” – and Fitz was teasing her.

“Let me see if I have it right,” he said, “She grew up in the small town of Wells, where she helped her two aunts run a snooker parlor, and she read about people she could never be, and –”

“– adventures she’d never have,” Jemma finished. “And she’d always dreamed of visiting the majestic state of Wisconsin.”

Fitz glanced bemusedly at her from where he was wiping down the pie bar. “But we’re not in Wisconsin.”  
  
“It’s not her fault that the flights here were cheaper.” Holding a stack of folded napkins, Jemma slipped past Fitz and patted him on his sleeved arm, a centimeter away from his bare elbow.

Fitz recoiled so harshly that Jemma dropped the remaining napkins. “Jesus, Jemma!”

They both crouched down to pick up the fallen, once-clean, rose-colored cloths. “Oh, Fitz, for God’s sake, I’m _fine_ –”

“You just don’t – you’ve _got_ to get better at remembering!” She rolled her eyes and strode back around the pie bar. “No, you _have_ to listen to me,” he almost-yelled, punctuating his frustration by punching the counter. A sharp crack told him he probably should not have done that, and he waved his hand in the air, in extreme pain. Jemma rushed back over to him and reached over the pie bar to take his hands, and he drew sharply back from her. “See? God!” 

She held her hands up, palms forward, as if he was pointing a gun at her, and tsked in annoyance. “Ok _ay_ , Fitz!”

“Just – please, listen to me for a minute, okay?” She studied his face, irked, but raised her hands in agreement and sat down on a stool across from him. Fitz took a deep breath, wincing as he inadvertently pressed on the injured knuckle, and forced himself to look directly at her.

“I’m terrified, Jemma. We don’t actually know if those leads will pan out and the worst part is that _I’m_ the problem, I’m the danger. I have to protect you from myself –”

“You don’t have to protect me, Fitz.” He could hear the exasperation in her voice, but he pressed on anyway.

“I _know_ that. I know that better than anyone, but –” He closed his eyes; he had to get through this to keep her safe. No more hiding from it, or ignoring it, or pretending it didn’t matter. If he didn’t make her understand she could get hurt, and he wouldn’t let that happen. “Things haven’t been the same for me. Between us. Not since the – not since you were sick. I didn’t know what to say, or how to say it, and I was scared, but I _need_ you to understand.”

He opened his eyes, exhaled a shaky breath, and met Jemma’s eyes. They were wide, and inscrutable, and almost unbearably lovely, and the thought of anything happening to her made him ache. “I want to be brave, but I am terrified of myself, of my own skin, of what I could do. Let me protect you this once, Jemma. Please. I couldn’t bear it if I did anything to hurt you.”

She stared back at him for what felt like forever, eyes never wavering from his, and Fitz’s heart beat so loudly in his chest that he could barely hear anything at all. When Jemma pushed her stool back and strode into the kitchen, Fitz winced but didn’t move, hoping that even if she was angry, or didn’t feel the same way, maybe she would at least _listen_ to him.

“Fitz, turn around,” Jemma ordered, and so he did. Before he knew what was happening, a large swathe of saran wrap was being pressed against his face, and then Jemma was kissing him through it. It was warm, and sticky, and strange, but also more than wonderful. He twitched his arms back behind himself when they began to inch forward of their own accord. The condensation wiped against his nose as he fitted his lips a little more perfectly over hers and thought about how he had never imagined it would happen quite like this.

When they broke apart at last, Jemma reluctantly stepped away from him and smiled tentatively.

Fitz swallowed. “That was…”

“Please don’t be angry,” Jemma interrupted. “I just had to find some way to do it, and look –” She picked up a rotten raspberry from a nearby crate. “No healing, no dead raising. I’m perfectly fine.”

“That was brilliant,” Fitz finished, still breathless and more than a little dumbstruck.

Jemma relaxed, and gave a small chuckle of relief. “Oh – good, then." 

Fitz twisted his hands together behind his back more tightly, trying to get the image of being able to hold her properly out of his head. “But next time you should wear gloves so that your hands can’t accidentally touch my face.” She raised an eyebrow in response, grinning. “If – ah, if you want there to be a next time.”

Jemma rolled her eyes and started putting away the day’s baking supplies. “Of course I do, you idiot. But this means that we’re going to have to work twice as hard to cure you. Otherwise we’re going to waste a fortune on saran wrap.”

Fitz swallowed rather thickly as he watched her disappear into the storage room and tried to remind himself that she was his best friend, a genius scientist, and a gifted agent, and he really shouldn’t be thinking about what she would look like _without_ the dress.

“Yup,” he murmured to himself. “We’ve got to find a way to fix this.”

 

\------

 

At that moment in the undercover pie shop, Fitz was holding his head under the industrial kitchen faucet and rinsing his own mouth out with soap. Jemma stood a few feet behind him, wringing her hands.

“I’m so sorry, Fitz, you weren’t supposed to eat those!”

He paused scrubbing his tongue long enough to reply, soap-foam curling around his mouth like a goatee. “You put liver _in_ my lunch!”

“Technically mincemeat has suet, which is mostly kidney fat and has nothing to do with the liver–” 

“Jemma!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I was just trying a new recipe, I didn’t think you’d eat one.”

“You left it on my food shelf.”

“I was just answering the order bell…”

Fitz strode to the freezer, grabbed the vodka they’d purchased in advance of Skye’s theoretical visit, and chugged down a good few gulps straight from the bottle. Of all the things that this stupid power had done to him, this was definitely the worst. The taste of the mincemeat pie’s fruits and spices had been washed out with a sudden, alarming leak of fresh blood, causing Fitz to spit the whole mouthful out onto the floor. Being a carnivore was all well and good until you brought the meat back to life in your mouth.

Jemma waited patiently while he finished spluttering and coughing from the strong alcohol, and then lifted the bottle gently away from him. “Does the drinking help?”

Fitz wheezed a little bit, refusing to wipe away the vodka tears. “It helps.”

While Jemma closed and put away what was left of the vodka, Fitz set about cleaning up the fairly horrifying mess he’d made, trying desperately not to breathe in while he did so. “They’re small.”

“What?”

“The mincemeat pies,” Fitz answered, dumping the waste into the trash. “They’re miniature.”

“Oh, I was trying out an idea I had.” She started putting the finishing touches on the pies they’d prepped earlier that morning, and Fitz caught himself staring at her legs and wondering what her skin would feel like under his bare hands. “Cup pies.”

Feeling somewhat lightheaded, Fitz shook his head, trying to clear it. “Cup pies?”

“I thought it might add some diversity to the menu – you don’t like the idea?” Her face fell, and it took him slightly longer than it should have to realize that he hadn’t answered yet. He grinned back at her, and went in search of something to eat to absorb the rest of the vodka sitting in his empty stomach.

“I think they sound great, Jemma. Very you – small and brilliant.” As he rummaged around in the pantry for crisps or cookies, he heard a quiet rustle of plastic behind him. Grabbing a snack-sized bag of Doritos, he swung around to see that Jemma had followed him into the cramped room, holding a large piece of saran wrap in her gloved hands.

Fitz grinned into Jemma’s lips as he leaned down to kiss her through the plastic, wrapping his arms around his back. If he thought about it hard enough, he could pretend that he could actually taste the fresh raspberries she’d just been eating. A small sigh escaped her lips, fogging the saran wrap. Fitz shivered, pressing her gently against the metal shelves, his own hands and bare forearms locked as far away from her as he could get.

In the nine days since they’d discovered this cheat – and that they _both_ wanted each other – they’d found a number of creative ways to get as close as possible without touching. Although there was a certain level of excitement to this kind of experimentation, and Jemma was proving to be rather inventive in ways Fitz would never have guessed, he was starting to lose patience. He’d spent years never thinking about all the little ways he comforted, patted, hugged, and tickled his best friend, and now that the really _interesting_ touching could begin, they couldn’t.

Jemma arched slightly upwards, and a sharp POP reverberated through the room so loudly that they separated with a jump. Fitz brushed off the saran wrap stuck to his face and sheepishly raised the Doritos bag he’d been holding when Jemma kissed him. The bag was crushed, and crumbs trickled pathetically out of the bottom. “Dorito?”

They both giggled, and Jemma leaned on his shoulder with a gloved hand. Fitz tried to hide his wince, subtly rolling down his sleeve while he found an open space on the shelf to drop the bag. Unsurprisingly, Jemma noticed exactly what he was doing and sighed, reaching up with one gloved hand to cup his cheek.

“We’re going to figure it out, okay?”

Fitz closed his eyes and leaned his face against her hand, trying to imagine that the thick yellow rubber was actually her skin. Then he frowned. “Jemma, where did you get those gloves?”

“Um.” She withdrew her hand from his face and his eyes flew open.

“Jemma…”

“Ignorance is bliss?”

“You got them from the cleaning cupboard, didn’t you?”

“I’m pretty sure these are the new ones.”

“The new ones that I used to clean the toilets yesterday?”

Jemma gave him a cringing smile and he strode out of the pantry and right back over to the sink and soap.

“Would it make you feel better if I said that I smelled them first?”

“Oh yes, loads, thanks for that.”

The order bell rang from the pie bar just as he finished washing off his face, with Jemma watching him from across the room, a smile teasing at her lips. They glanced at each other, and Jemma went to put away the gloves while Fitz grabbed his apron and headed out to the front.

He stepped out of the kitchen, head down as he tied the apron strings. “Hello, welcome to the Pie Hole –” Fitz stopped talking when he looked up and saw Agent Coulson standing in front of him, suit as black as ever and sly smirk in place.

“Special delivery for the pie maker.”

Jemma came rushing in from the kitchen, tying on her own apron, then released an involuntary “ _oh_ ” and stopped short when she saw Coulson.

Fitz’s eyes darted quickly to the handful of customers sitting in the shop’s booths, and answered in his friendly-store-keeper voice. “How can we help you today, sir?”

Coulson gave a subtle nod, and turned around to face the seating area. “I’m sorry everyone, but we’re going to have to close down the shop for a surprise health code inspection.”

“Oh _hell_ no,” muttered an absurdly tall, dark-skinned man as he unfolded himself from the booth that was surely too small for him to be comfortable. Fitz wondered briefly if he’d even come up to this man’s shoulders.

“If you contact us via our Twitter page, we will be happy to send you a half-off coupon for your next visit,” Jemma offered apologetically. He gave her a brusque nod, plopping an old-fashioned, brimmed hat on his head as he ducked out the front door.

Once all of the customers had exited, Jemma locked the door and leaned against it. “Oh no. That’s going to look terrible on our Yelp reviews.” 

“Jemma, you know that we don’t actually run this shop for a living, right?”

“Okay, Fitzsimmons, the facts are these.” Coulson folded up his sunglasses and started twisting the Venetian blinds closed. “After a lot of mixed messages and a little bit of bribery, we were able to find a way to counteract the effects from the altar that were transferred to you in the explosion.”

Fitz dropped the silverware he had cleaned off a table and scrambled to pick it all up. “You – we have a _cure_?”

“How?” Jemma breathed, frozen in place on her way to help with the shutters.

“Two hours ago in the desert northwest of here, Lady Sif dropped off a syringe containing a vaccine.”

“Actually, it’s probably closer to an antiserum–” Jemma trailed off at Coulson’s raised eyebrow. 

“While we’re at it, you owe Heimdall a dozen of your pear pies, Simmons. That was his price for letting Sif through against Odin’s direct orders.” 

She brightened. “The kind with gruyere baked into the crust?”

“That’s the one. Not sure exactly how he knew that you made those, but I decided it was better not to question the request of someone generally revered as a god.” With the shades all closed tightly, Coulson turned around and removed a syringe from his coat. “Trip’s securing the perimeter, May’s getting the Bus ready for a quick take off, and Skye’s busy scrubbing all electronic evidence of your undercover identities.”

Jemma eyed the syringe, hands placed lightly on either side of her neck, like she always did when she was nervous. “Do you think I could examine the antiserum, sir? Maybe test some of it on a few of Fitz’s cells before we…”

“Normally I’d applaud your thoroughness Simmons, but we’re out of time. Skye thinks Hydra cracked Fitz’s fake identity yesterday, so–”

“They’re coming for me,” Fitz whispered, staring at the way gold flecks seemed to float through the glass syringe.

“We have an hour to meet May back at the Bus.”

“Maybe we could go to the Bus now, and I could take a quick look at it in the lab before–”

“Jemma.” At the sound of Fitz’s voice she stuttered to a stop, hands back against her neck. “They could be waiting for me outside of the shop now, right?” Coulson nodded. “So if the antiserum works, we can prove that they’re after the wrong person. Or it kills me, and we won’t have to worry.” He tried to laugh, to lighten the rapidly darkened mood, but it sounded hollow even to him.

Jemma shot a horrified glance at Coulson, who just clenched his jaw in reply, and she turned back to Fitz, reaching out to him. “Oh, _Fitz_ –”

“It’s gonna be okay, Jemma,” he murmured, trying to smile. She exhaled shakily, and then deliberately clasped her hands in front of her aquamarine dress, keeping eye contact with Fitz. He nodded, pressing his own hands together for a moment, knowing that they were both pretending to be holding the other’s hand.

“Fitz,” Coulson interjected quietly.

“Right, sir, sorry.” Coulson held the syringe out to Fitz, who lifted it gingerly out of his hands, careful not to touch him.

Fitz rolled up the sleeve of his left arm and, with Jemma’s instructions, injected the entire contents of the syringe into his veins. He flexed his hand and took a deep breath, trying to remember all of the good that had come out of the past few weeks, focusing on the fact that Jemma knew how he felt now, and that she felt the same in return.  

Jemma bounced anxiously on the balls of her feet as they all waited for the antiserum to take effect, and Fitz looked up into her eyes just as he collapsed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of Pushing Daisies references in this chapter - did you find all of them? :-)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Fitz would’ve sworn that this was the best moment of his entire, ridiculous life."
> 
> Fluff, and a conclusion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all, folks! Thanks again to MK! And sorry this is so much shorter than the other chapters - but I squeezed in as much fluff as possible. Never underestimate the curative powers of fluff.

“Fitz? Oh thank God, you’re awake.”

He opened his eyes to see Jemma leaning over him, gloved hands hovering just above his skin. Coulson was kneeling on his other side, in the process of putting on his own gloves.

Fitz scooted backwards, and stood up, only a little unsteady on his feet. “What happened?”

“You passed out,” Coulson replied.

“It’s been less than a minute – we only had time to get gloves and come back when you started to wake up. How do you feel?” Jemma put one gloved hand on his forehead and he let her examine him, still too woozy to object.

“You were sort of glowing.” Coulson had also stood up but was keeping his distance, warily eyeing the syringe where it dropped.

“Glowing?”

“Like a much dimmer version of that flash that happens when you revive the fruit. Or people,” Jemma added, as an afterthought.

Fitz blinked his eyes, backed rapidly away from her, and practically ran into the kitchen. He reached one of the shelves where they kept the rotten fruit and shoved his hand into a basket of decomposing raspberries. Nothing happened. He tried the blueberries and apricots, and had a handful of mealy strawberries when Jemma and Coulson rounded the corner to the pantry, puzzled by his sudden, vaguely maniacal laughter.

Jemma only had to glance down at the moldering fruit in his hand to understand. “You’re cured?”

“Yes,” he answered breathlessly before dropping the fruit, wrapping his arms around her shoulders, and pressing his lips firmly to hers – no barrier required. His hands were sticky, and stained red, and he was still shaking a little from the antiserum coursing through his body, but when Jemma opened her mouth just enough to slide her tongue over his bottom lip, Fitz would’ve sworn that this was the best moment of his entire, ridiculous life. 

Coulson cleared his throat behind them, startling Jemma enough to break away but Fitz refused to be embarrassed now. After finally having everything it felt like he’d ever wanted, he couldn’t stand to let her go, so he kept his arms around her waist and pressed his forehead gently against her temple while she turned towards Coulson.

“I’m going to start cleaning out your apartment. I’ll let the others know it worked and that we’ll be on our way soon.”

Fitz heard Coulson’s black loafers clip sharply on the kitchen tile but didn’t turn to see him leave. Instead, he wrapped his arms more fully around Jemma and dipped his face to nuzzle at the sensitive skin just behind her ear, wondering how he’d never really noticed before what she smelled liked or that she got goosebumps when he breathed against her skin. Her chuckle reverberated through him, and she smoothed her fingers through his hair, gently combing through the curls.

“Fitz,” she murmured.

“No.” 

“We have work to do.”

He tightened his arms around her. “I’m not moving.”

She huffed indignantly. “If you don’t let me go, I’m going to tell everyone about your newfound fondness for latex gloves.”

“Hey,” Fitz spluttered, his arms loosening enough in his surprise that Jemma could slip away. “That was _your_ idea!” She reached up to kiss him lightly on the cheek, and then trotted into the kitchen.

“You can go help Coulson pack up the lab supplies in the apartment, I’ll finish down here.” Fitz nodded his assent, but Jemma spoke again before he reached the stairway door. “Hey.” He turned around; she was wiping berry juice off of her arms and smiling. “Ready to be going home? To be doing _proper_ science again?" 

Fitz chuckled and his eyes landed on another crate full of rotting fruit. “I have had _more_ than enough of studying the scientific properties of pie-making and dead-waking, thank you very much. I’m ready for something normal.”

Jemma laughed, and picked up Sleepy from his daytime post behind the pie bar. “Like stealth weapons delivery mechanisms and drone engineering?”

“Exactly.” He watched her disappear into the cleaning closet where she kept her field kit and notes on Fitz’s health, and then he took a last look around the pie shop. In some small way he was going to miss this place, if only because it had felt something like their own private island, where for nine whole days the only thing that had mattered was the two of them. Fitz grinned and shook his head, opening the door to the upstairs, and reminded himself that this couldn’t possibly be considered an ending.

 

\------

 

“So your first kiss was _through_ plastic wrap.” Skye shifted over to make room for Fitz at the counter, and tossed popcorn into her mouth. “Way to work around your superpower.”

“Well, not _my_ first kiss, but with–”

She rolled her eyes. “First kiss with Simmons, yeah, stud, I got it.” Skye leaned against the counter, chewing through her grin. “Well, I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised that the two biggest geeks on the Bus couldn’t get together in a boring way.”

Fitz shook his head at her teasing and reached for the whistling kettle. “Just promise that you won’t tell the others, okay? It’s already awkward enough –” Two arms wrapped snuggly around his waist, and the wool of Jemma’s sweater tickled lightly against his arm.

“You are absolutely the _slowest_ at making tea.” Jemma leaned up to kiss Fitz on the back of his neck and stretched around to grab her mug.

Fitz turned, stirring his own tea. “Skye made me tell her about the first time we, you know–”

“Kissed through saran wrap?” Jemma offered helpfully before sipping gingerly at her steaming drink.

Skye shook her head. “It just seems so _weird_. I mean, wasn’t it, like, sticky?”

There was a moment of silence, and Jemma slid her eyes over to Fitz. “Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it.” She grinned, and traipsed back to her room. Fitz watched her hips swing slightly as she disappeared into the bunk, and decided that her fitted black slacks were infinitely preferable to the fluffy, girly dresses.

When he glanced back at Skye, her eyebrows were raised almost to her hairline. Fitz shrugged before following in Jemma’s footsteps. “Oh, and Skye–” He walked backwards for a few steps. “If you tell the others, I’ll tell May about that dream you had a few months ago involving you, her, and Lola.” Getting to see Skye redden slightly before he bumped into one of the common room chairs was completely worth it.

“Fitz,” Skye said, stepping towards him while he swiped errant tea drops off his cardigan. “I just wanted to say – I’m really happy for you guys. It’s been a long time coming.”

They smiled at each other for a moment, and Fitz ducked his head. “Cheers, Skye. Thanks.”

Skye raised her mug in a mock-toast. “Now, go get the girl.”

He laughed. “I think she got me first.” Fitz turned into Jemma’s room, where she was curled up on the bed and holding a report from Koenig’s base team.

“Did she say ‘get the girl?’” She asked, wrinkling up her nose, as Fitz scooted around behind her on the bed. “As if. You’d be completely lost without me.”

He brushed a strand of hair behind her ear and smiled, reveling in their return to a lack of personal space. “I absolutely would be.” Jemma reached up to kiss him then, and when he trailed his fingers down her neck and she hummed appreciatively, Fitz knew that being loved by Jemma Simmons was better than any superpower he could possibly imagine.

**Author's Note:**

> Anyone who understands all of the Pushing Daisies easter eggs gets major cool points!
> 
> Thank you so much to MK for editing this whole darned thing!


End file.
